Sherri doffed her unsightly garb to contribute to a collaboration with myself and Malady Charlotina, whereby she shall paint upon some of my images, depicting saintly icons in a carnival environment, martyrs for the masses. But as the painting part will take time, I became bored and made a placeholder

there is such a thing as too much empathy and I'm a victim of it. In tolerable doses like a ligament that connects to other life, to people and planets, to love for a questing heron and pain for the fish it's eating simultaneously. But it's strength can become unbearable, an expanding gravitational well that pulls in all of the sister Pathos, until you suffer nothing for yourself. Your heart becomes a moon in orbit, creating tides inspiring the science and poetry in others, but barren and cratered, uninhabitable. Love the things you can touch more.

a completely bank holiday mad dash through Copenhagen leaves me wishing there was more time; the city is beautiful, like Amsterdam only more capacious, more direct. Long sprawling avenues under low, lazy streetlights, caressed by swarms of cyclists guided by their very own miniature traffic signals. Herons carouse majestically over the many parks, rubbing feathers with wood pigeons and swans, that hiss like alabaster alley cats when you approach. Our foray precedes the queens annual procession through the city center, and though our spandex schedule can't allow room for her august presence, soldiers pipe and snap along the route, anticipating. The train to hamburg is a restless human laden affair, people in the aisles and pressed against outer doors like rumbling barnacles, each repeated story of erupted lament aquires the sameness of receding waves scratching the sand. Same story as us. We cross into germany on the ferry, watching sunlight shimmer off the waves, like static on an old black and white television. Too pretty an afternoon for this choked train, for volcanic ash. A one hour layover in hamburg precipitates a run on mcdonalds, as we have not consumed since an ugly late night train snack; the German franchise has bagels, bless. I yearn to try the neighboring vittle venue, it's logo being an extatic graphite pigs head in the act of smashing it's way through the wall. No stretch sorting out what happened to the rest of him...The apex of our wounded trek via train through 4 countries in 24 hours looms a mere 20 minutes hence, I shiver in recollection of moses' fate, sinking beneath the sand just breaths before Canaan. Then I remember I'm here for a big fetish party, god has bigger fish to fry and so, for that matter, does sand. I'd sink into a bed, between the pale flour of her thighs.

I meet christiane at the Stockholm central station at 10pm, and it appears our flight to Amsterdam is doomed due to icelands volcanic episode. Desperate to make the wasteland party on Saturday night, we commit to an adventure in trains, kayaks and dromedary, whatever the fuck gets us from here to there, trusting in a refund from air Baltic to at least defray the expense. We are astride our second train of the morning, toward Copenhagen and count dracula cannot be far behind... We shall make for the borgo pass, cutting the fiend off from his native earth that so, wait, I'm reciting keanu reeves; at best volcanic ash might coalesce into some demonic Finnish golem named Ed Walpole. The line for the ticket counter in Copenhagen coils like a giant python, and it's 6am. We fail to get the direct train to Amsterdam, resulting in a 200 euro mission through 6 cities over 12 hours. No volcano raining ash on my party, bitch. Despite the face bleaching cost, the sheer adventure of the detour is exhilarating, and we have 4 hours to kill in Dane land.

totally shitfaced drunk at a bar in Stockholm, and christiane referring to Amelie, says:" she has nice boobs, boobs like mine. Good for fighting"We've been in Sweden for 3 days, and thanks to an unusual twist of fate involving a license revocation, I'm the proud driver of a souped up jaguar for the duration of my stay. What a way to learn the fine art of foreign road navigation, the swedes seem to err on the side of common sense over demonstrative signage. The roundabouts, like inscrutable tidepools, are particularly sticky to negotiate. I find that going really fast helps my concentration.

After a brief nap and a gauntlet run through wristwatch-peddling vendors (good price, real rolex!), we arrive hours early at the airport on yesterdays unpunched tickets. Italy is relaxed about most everything, particularly public transit and saturated fats, and you can get great mileage off a single purchase, especially if you look all doe eyed and foreign. And travel with pretty girls helps too, va bene. I get a baleful eye from customs as my passport is unstamped; why am I not stamped with entry to Italy? Because the Rome guy didn't stamp me; I want a stamp! I just got a new, grafitti free virgin of a passport, stamp it! Clearing with a mere one exit stamp, albeit from Pisa, I mount the plane hoping for a peaceful transition through uk immigration, I have plenty more pages to spare. Still a bit jittery about uk customs, as they appear rather distrustful of the truth; that I have a bit of cash in the bank and am travelling for the sheer joy of it. I make it through unscathed, grateful for the officials cheery aplomb once I told him my purpose for the 3 week visit in Italy. Weeding. In a monastery no less. "do you plan to do any weeding during your stay in the UK?".

the hostel, practically underneath the lean, gets top marks for nice, especially considering the 18 euro tab; just checked the bank balance and the hotel Doria in lerici ended up running 570 bucks for 3 days, pretty sure I'll be good with lower budget digs from here on out...it's grim up north, though. Definitely need to reprise at least part of this trip in less inclement weather. Visits to the museum dell'opera and the baptistry beneath the tower, the latter having demonstrably the most stunning acoustics I've ever heard. The museum was a bit lackluster, housing bit that fell off the cathedral, but they did have a small section of roman and Etruscan antiquities which make me happy. A long stroll along the river, until we find an ancient ruin converted to a playground containing a most feudal, towering spinning merrygoround, the best ever beheld. Much dizziness ensues, especially as I hold true to hugging the apex of the centrifugal force; the bar spanning the circumference of the beast. I almost hope to get thrown from my steed, lunch almost gets thrown from my guts. Lunch was a rather soupy lasagna at a tourist trap. I'm not proud to have patronized the place, but will be even less so should it geyser all over the pretty jungle gym.

Arrive in Pisa during a proper blizzard, and as usual, fuck up the bus and end up a 20 minute walk past the destination. The tower, a blasted minas tirith white, looks fairy tale caressed by snow. A bit smaller than I expect. If it had opposable thumbs, it'd overcompensate by driving a Ferrari. Tiramisu for late lunch at a nearby tratorria, and my pants don't fit. Anymore. They used to fit, its not like I originally bought illfitting pants.

decision is made to leave a bit earlier for Pisa, being that it's fuuucking snowing! Not the ripest weather for trail walking. The hotel noticed, regrettably, that there were 3 of us in the room, and promptly, as all hotels are when it comes to the bill, raised our rate 50%. Hard to argue when they have my passport. Shouldve stolen the scrambled eggs at breakfast...I am engaged in conversation by a loquacious Senegalese on the bus, who speaks in a mixture of French, Italian and English, and whom I somehow easily understand; he is residing illegally in La Spezia selling umbrellas and wooden cats to tourists. we chat about Africa, Obama and my junker jacket for about 20 minutes before he writes down his email and disembarks. He asks me, between chews on a toothpick dangling in the crevasse of a split lower lip, to take his picture next time I'm in town. And I have a strange, compelling idea to actually take him up on it, to return here and photograph his tribe of immigrants, how they came to be here, what their stories are, how they manage... Perhaps for many, with soaring unemployment rates in their home countries, selling tat to tourists is the only option outside of crime. Sure they're a pain in the ass when all you're trying to do is explore and enjoy a new city; but I wonder if they merit more respect than we mete out? One thing he said sticks; that Italy is racist, hard to endure, but America is free of racism, because we elected Barack Obama, a black man. During my most recent meanderings across europe, i have heard on more than one occasion, a newfound respect for americans based solely on our mutual decision regarding the presidency. If you travelled after 9/11 like I did, breaking against the abysmal opinions of Americans inspired by Bush and his foreign policy, a statement of such brash, but utterly positive naïveté, makes me feel as though even if Obama does absolutely nothing in office, just plays foosball with his valet in the nude while watching the Twilight trilogy and Ginger Snaps, the simple reality of his election has done so much to repair our battered national image. We can finally stop pretending to be Canadian.

there are interchangeable moments that appear periodically in life, where the eyes are always closed, the sun is always out, spring is almost here, and the only sound of either wind or sea. I wonder, when my eyes open, where in time I will be, and almost always expect it to be other than the one it actually is.

There is a purple flower that grows between the flagstones in Umbria. It blossoms every morning in the direction of the rising sun, and turn along the stars axis, shadowing her slow progression through the sky. Observing this flower is like believing in god. My petal folded eyes hunt the warmth,

this hotel was recommended based on it's continental breakfast, and I do believe, between the fresh squeezed blood orange juice and limitless capucchinos, that I may never leave. But San terenzo beckons, a dreamy coastal stroll retracing the steps of the Shelleys, along rock drizzled paths that follow the water, up past the terenzo castle, until it breaks suddenly against the cliffside, smote by the seas saltwater fists...that, or maybe the local contracor pocketed the money needed for the last leg. The volcanic rock bites like an angry pommeranian, but I decide to leap the broken bridge to the cliff and mantle my way to the other side; more beautiful beach stretched against the rock, but no way around besides a swim. We return to lerici, and after a brief rest, unravel the route to the great lerici castle, a stentorian bulwark, a basilisk roused against the coming of the Barbarian horde; duly transformed into the silliest of dinosaur museums I shall er be privvy to witness. I believe John Cleese curates. The castle interior is as impressive as it's exterior battlements, but in some not too distant past, someone decided that some papier mâché raptors would really lure those tourist dollars. There was one particular raptor, clearly the outcome of a barely passing 4th grade science project, whose head had been neatly struck off and remounted with lots of copper wire, just maniacally wound about it's lilting neck like a Masai decoration. Something akin to 70s era Connery bond belly dance tabla trance was piped through the speakers in the main area, though my dream of a conga line of krunking tutu clad tyrannosaurs did not materialize. This exhibit should come with free mushrooms, or pony rides. Tommorrow we continue on to the cinque terre, to coastal hikes and sweeping vistas that labor ones eyes with fecund glory.

I've come to the end of the journey here in Umbria, boarding literally at the last moment, the train for Rome, then onward to cinque terre and Pisa. Despite the challenges presented by the lack of heat and hot water, I truly enjoyed working outdoors in the jawdropping environment, surrounded by meadows and mountains, medieval worlds just a walk away. There's a little romantic voice telling me to chuck my vocation and learn the art of the vine, that I may produce and photograph the quinntissential Chardonnay here in tumbling Umbria, though I intend to minimize the heeding for now...3.5 hours later and we arrive under cover of Alps, at la Spezia, which is abruptly armpitty, but oh well, you got to put the factories somewhere I guess. Lerici is a sleepy coastal village at the end of the Italian riviera, 15 more minutes by bus. It is dominated by a formidable castle jutting into the bay, now a museum of sorts, and has the dubious honor of being the place where Percy Shelley drowned, this part of italy being a favorite haunt of the poetic duo, manifest in the many trattorias, streets and hotels that have adopted a part or all of their names. Our hotel has a heater and hot water, and a terribly civilized minibar, though it does require some fortitude getting up the winding cobble-strewn stairs with all the luggage. Time enoughfor a quick trip around the piazzas before a nap. We have a rather lot of wine with dinner, and i decide to run up the myriad stairs to our hotel. I almost decide to throw up, but change my mind.

I leave my shoes outside to relax and enjoy the sudden downpour, so now I get to explore Amelia with infantry trenchfoot. Maybe someone will mustard gas me in the face before a good, stiff ass bayonetting; I feel like I'm in a Metallica video. We have time for a quick cappucino in Narni. Italians don't really do breafast, in the egg/toast/tea manner I'm so accustomed to; as usual, they are more easy going...dessert! Cappuchino of course, but only till round 2pm, then you instantly become a tourist ordering anything other than espresso, and pastries typically doused in heavy cream and custard. 2pm is also when one is supposed to switch to buona cera, just FYI. Amelia is a thoroughly beautiful mountain town encircled by a wall that gives the Vatican's pretensions pause. Traffic is prohibited in the historic center at odd intervals, though not when we arrive. Traversing the approximate perimeter takes just over an hour, but since all of the churches and roman cisterns we pass are all inexplicably closed, we end up at la porta romana, our starting point, far earlier than expected. The best solution, in order to kill some time before siesta is over and the groceries reopen, is to get on the wrong bus and end up stranded for an hour in Terni, which has the dubious honor of being the only town in Umbria that looks like an anchovy's asshole. We wait an hour for the bus back to narni, and finish our food shopping with alacrity. I teach the butcher how to say "good evening" instead of buona cera and he donates an extra slice of porchetta to our pasta pool. And then we find cocoa puffs and the dampness suffusing my frozen feet evaporates in a sauna of soggy chocolate delight.

we sleep past the first bus to narni, emerging unto a countryside wreathed in mist. The bus is balls deep in grannies. Our shoot is inside La Rocca, a restored fortess above Narni, closed to the public, but Germano, beyond being quite the racecar driver, also has castle connections. He runs the medieval festival in Narni and comes equipped with armfuls of rennaisance costumery, swords and a plumed helmet. We embark on one of the stranger shoots in my experience, roaming the halls in voluminous velvet, doing my best with the near nonexistent light. Unfortunately; the restoration takes a distinctly utilitarian turn, most of the rooms are white stucco and come prepared with modern windows and gas heaters, with big overt halogen sconces. I will definitely have some ageing to accomplish in the Photoshop. Christiane pleads desperately for the chance to bare herself and wear the helmet. We decide to leave our further trip to Amelia for the morrow, and return to the farm with a bellyful of pizza and croquettes. The markedly improved weather this afternoon obviously prompts me to shoot christiane in the nude. On the roof.

a sad, tragic day today, as a masterstroke of a volley cracks the only ping pong ball. I think I dislocated my pancreas weeding the garden, but aim to put it back with a spell of jumprope. Our shoot in the closed castle of narni has been approved for tommorrow complete with medieval gowns and weapons, which should make for an interesting change from chickens.

Plenty of work to do, much hoeing and ping pong abounded, at least until mid-afternoon, when the farm is assailed by a thunderstorm. The power goes out in spurts throughout the day and night, and I am consoled by further battlestar, and finally succeed in getting some important photo retouching out and about. Almost done with my magnum opus of Neil gaiman and Amanda Palmer as Odysseus and siren. I still hate eggplant, even if Its grilled on the fireplace coals... Now pancetta on the other hand, turns out I can swallow 2.5 pieces of smoked, chargrilled dripping pig bits before passing out.

a few nudie pictures around the tower to surprise Brittney with on a later blog. 2 cappuccinos later, I am taken on a tour of germanos tower, and incredible ascending labyrinth bathed in glazed tiles and hand painted wallpaper, overseeing the main piazza in narni. It's most recent inhabitants were a pair of old women, and although impeccably decorated, the apartments are definitely granny infused, down to the hats and shoes still stowed neatly in the armoires. We pick up a newly arrived robekkah at the piazza, and return to Santa brigada for a thoroughly demonstrative evening.

the sultry vixen has blisters from all her hoeing... in the garden, not to disappoint those hoping for a more demonstrative visual. So blisters on fingers, nothing contagious or requiring salve. By the by, should you catch yourself in the process of weeding, I highly reccommend dresden dolls for your training montage; the perfect metaphor tottering effortlessly between a naval marching band and dust bowl sideshow. You'll be having so much fun bending and plucking, you won't even notice your back break in half.A short stint amidst hay and weeds, and we head to the bus for Narni, our hot shower awaits, bless. And it was good... In fact I do not believe christiane is ever coming out. We drive through the hastening verdant countryside to Carsulae, and jump the fence to enter. As I shoot a few of Brittney using a reflector in an ancient church, a couple of reps from the achaeological society barge in; they've been peeking via video camera. Oddly, we don't get told off for fence jumping, just that we need to sign a document stating the never use of imagery for anything money garnering... Even though I was the camera clad pony, they had Germano do the honors, so as far as I'm concerned, these bitches are ripe for a nice magazine cover. Germano says jail in Italy is very nice anyway, and he could use the rest. The ruins themselves are epic in a singular way; they aren't butted up, like everything else I've seen in every big city from Rome to Paris, against anything new. They are surrounded by meadows and mountains, and one truly gets a sense of scope, of the environment as it might have been, only fractured and abandoned. We actually have a bloody picnic amid the columns. With the Umbrian wine. After a long, ambling afternoon, I am treated to a more modern Italian moment. A couple has picked this particular parking lot to fuck in. Being that the cars here are like little pinpricks with wheels, it's a rather yogic experience, I imagine. On the way back we discover first hand the ferocity of the Italian sheep dog, as one, deciding our presence on the road going 60 km was a threat, launched himself into the side of the car, and chased us 100 yards down the street. Apparently, when you happen among some sheep here in the country, on a leisurely walk perhaps, you fucking run away. Because the dog actually tried to eat our car. We are spending the night at brittneys watch tower, an actual medieval one mind you, straddling an arch above the via Flaminia. After a long wander in Narni, and some tourist priced pizza, we sleep. At least for now...

the morning spent layering cardboard and hay in the garden and shooing off the rather persistent chickens, who cheerfully swallow the worms we dig up. A long, beautiful lunch dominated by amazing porcini bruscetta, and wine that puts a new spin on the many games of ping pong that follow. Christiane is addicted, already trying to deduce a way to bring the table back with us.

There is a certain harmonious elegance to country life that beggars it's urban counterpart; after a long, luxurious stroll to Minas Tirith (granted the Italians have renamed it Poggio and dirtied up the breastworks some to avoid attracting the attention of maurauding Orcs, cunningly diguised as begroceried little grannies, obviously) we return, and I prepare a lunch of pasta al funghi con porchetta, using the delectable pork and mushrooms native to this region; the pork grows in the garden right next to the carrots. I shave in large swaths of pecorino, a cheese that lives somewhere in between the embattled regions of Parmesan and cheddar, though neither are as war torn as Swiss, throw in an egg i gathered this morning from the recalcitrant hens, and dip the bread we made from scratch yesterday into a bowl of balsamic and olive oil, the oil pressed from olives sourced on the premises. The solitary wine christiane bought at the local vinery... Is on the sideboard, because we're saving it for a picnic at Carsulae, but I stare at the bottle and it's label that says Umbria as the Lord Nelson tea splashes frivolously, which by the way, it can only do when drunk outside of its native England.

for some esoteric reason, i decide today is the day, the perfect day, to shovel all the chicken shit out of the coop. It takes a mere 2 hours, during which I manage to catch an ordure rebound to the face at least twice, paving the way for that special home-cooked botulism I've so coveted. A trip to the Narni grocery store takes us past a beautiful medieval church on it's own finger promontory, surrounded by dozing olive groves. Each hamlet we pass has at least one of these intimate churches, and each has it's own mass. There are priests that lead services for as many as 12 neighboring churches each week. For the purpose of this narrative, I'd like to imagine them on scooters. An old, solitary bent man on an even more unstraight ladder prunes an olive tree, while his dog barks at imaginary priests on scooters. I can only assume, being that there are several dozen trees remaining, that he must finish on the leaves of the last just in time to begin again on the first.We bake bread in the afternoon, and as the team leaders venture off for the evening, ours consists of sponge bath, sex, and warmth being that we can abscond with the epic kerosine heater. We end the evening with battlestar galactica season 1 finale and sleep.

Walked around grove, being that it was a spottily pretty day and took a few pics of the farmhouse. The veggie garden got a new pathway courtesy of christiane and a bunch of tiles i dug out of the grass.. And thanks to some google research, it was a day of great and mighty fire. We finished with the sun by loafing in the hammock, and I took a few sneaky pics of the girl while she drew.

rain, rain, pervasive wet and a buzzkill. After chores we huddle before our little fire and watch back to back episodes of battlestar galactica. The rustic appeal is beginning to wear a bit thin; 5 days without a shower because the water is so unbearably cold, and an ongoing sniffle augments the damp. Our laundry refuses to dry. And I get no bars. I'm switching to Cingular. Actually my phone doesn't function, I tried to use it as an internal heat source by rubbing it against my cardigan and then dousing it in lamp oil...

every morning I wake up at 7am, and the water in the toilet is so chilly that a gout of pee steam envelopes me, which is less lovely than you would think...but today is beautiful and no goddamned rain at least, and we are headed to carnivale in Poggio for the day! A long wounded hour in the car with Romano race car driving has christiane a mite billious, but we round the bend past an abandoned hermitage and suddenly...people! The first real aggregation of people since leaving Rome. Even young ones. The costume du jour seems to swing between renaissance goth and oh holy Jesus, though there was an enormous group dressed as dalmations; disposable painter coveralls with spray painted black spots and socks sewed onto the ears. Some were even in a band that played mandolin Kiss covers. I buy a tie with a monster sewed onto it. We eat ice cream, wine served in plastic water bottles and porchetta sandwiches. I have decided (after some wine) that I shall document the event by inserting my lense into the nostrils of the best dressed passerbys. There is a giant combustible puppet with a hairy ass, but we leave before it's fate seals. My favorite moment was looking up at an apartment window with the faces of 2-3 Italian grans pressed against it like ficus leaves, looking down aghast upon the throng of the merry. And an Italian who looked just like a dusky stephen fry. And a drunken old man dressed as a clown hitting people in the face with confetti. We return in time for a wonderful barbecue and rest contented and thoroughly full in every respect.

Morning commences with my hauling rocks out of the pool with a rake. After work, we take the bus to Narni, the geographical center of Italy, and one of it's first republics, astride a deep, sullen valley. Narni was originally the roman province of narnia, and being that it provided inspiration for Lewis' chronicles of narnia, I don't believe I need to go into much in the way of detail in my description of how fucking pleasant it is. Just picture a bunch of fairytale towers and castles and curves and shit, and you pretty much get the idea. An actual sacricicial altar from immemorium, like a buoy announcing the town entrance. But no full throated lions. Brittney lives above an old archway, just beyond one of three enormous gates leading into the town, in an old guard tower redolent of eua du particular granny. It has winding stone stairs that lead nowhere! How awesome is that. We attend her wish for lunch, and meet Romano her lover along the way, who takes us to his favorite hillside resteraunt, loosely translated as The Embarrassed Chicken, for a proper Italian dining experience that leaves my mouth too full for small talk. Manfriccoli, that I may bathe in your soapy coils, lo it is far too cold out, so I shall merely eat you with bread.

5am awake, fuck! I'll go outside and witness the sun rise, glorious and respl..no, it's pouring out. First shift of the day is chicken detail, releasing the wily beasts and capturing their unfertilized offspring, narrowly avoiding the cunningly laid offal traps these feathered crap machines produce in such abundance. After the cleaning chores, we wander off to explore Calvi, a beautiful hilltop medieval town 45 minutes down the road. Arrive there during siesta, thread our way through narrow overtly cobblestoned avenues and marvel at the sheer lack of humans. The rain drives us back home at a trot. Brittney the volunteer coordinator crouches in the lee of the laundry, girded with work detail that ought to keep us occupied till our apotheosis.

I wake at 5 am thanks to the fucking nap, and linger in bed for 2 hours before breakfast. This time I secure myself some goddamn dinner rolls moments before the germans clear them out. There is only hot cappuccino milk foam for the cereal. We retrieve our tickets to calvi, and search for smoothies in vain, before embarking on our journey to the countryside. Once you get 15 minutes out of Rome, the grafitti diminishes down lusty green and meadowy vistas. The farmhouse we are staying in for the next 3 weeks adjacent to the monastery, is out of a dream, astride a hilltop overlooking olive groves and figs. And table tennis. I lean out our window taking pictures before being pulled away for lunch. The nap is 3 hours this time but I'm up in time for dinner of homemade chicken soup, regaled by burning man stories by our hosts Betsy and christopher, before wine and steak. The heat is broken, so we take ourselves to bed thankful for a being to nestle against, because it's fucking cold in here.

I wake at 7am and push myself past the long sense memories of gorgeous sex, of someone banging on the wall, of less than good pizza eaten in bed, an interlude. The breakfast room is crowded with a choirfull of German tourists, who appear to have scarfed all the bread. We tumble easily towards the Vatican, passing the colloseum and trevi fountain, both on our left hand side (for once) and stop for ice cream beside the pantheon. Finally onward to the sistene chapel, which is monumentally more impressive than expected, the characters exude from the ceiling, escape artists one musical key away from pouring onto the crowd below. I would love some drugs. A particularly insidious fart as we exit, which echoes like an angels trumpet. The museum has so many busts, it looks more like a shop display, and 3 of the amazingly intact full body statues actually still have their bronze weapons in hand, something I've not witnessed in any other museum; it's like the Vatican handed out to other institutions all the crumbly tat they couldn't find a hall for. We return to nap, and 4 hours later emerge for a lovely dinner in a taverna with a British flag outside. The lasagna was heavenly and bilingual.

The soaring phallus that is British air got me into heathrow over an hour late, just in time to thwart my connecting flight to Rome, my connecting digits to christianes extremeties. Sitting right next to the wing, I was one of the fortunates poised to witness a bonafide lightning bolt hit the plane. My bursting enthusiasm for the girl must bide it's time until Rome now, but fear not, for I have a whole 5 pound voucher to atone for the hassle, and that's enough for porn.Track forward 5 minutes; the airport bookstore is bereft of porn, what happened to the permissive Europe I so cherish? Lickily, luckily the smoked salmon sandwich at pret a manger sliced diagonally looks and smells enough like a vagina to keep hope alive. And since there are 2 halves, that tantamount to threeway action. Hold the cream cheese, I'll churn some of my own.I feel like weeping when I see her for the first time, resting against a pillar in the less than first world airport. We pass the turn towards the train, just as we did on our initial Rome adventure, and riding the escalator pressed together, I realize the customs official never stamped my passport. I am not here.

Bloody brilliant shoot of the immaculate Neil Gaiman and the silent but deadly Amanda Palmer, in New York for the eagerly anticipated Coihouse Magazine. Both a treat, both so talented, I felt like a girl in petticoats kneeling before royalty.

these beautiful labyrinthes beckoning, the erasure of the hovering fog obliterates the sky, and I feel like a revenant floating along the canals, over bridges and against the crumbling brick edifices and shuttered windows. We become purposeful in our mapless abandon, wandering the alleys and arches until, after more than a single circle, we arrive on the hallowed st marks square. The basilica is monumental, a marble pastiche of venices forgotten glory, littered with pigeons that will acrobatically land on your shoulders should you proffer a crust. The florian coffee house, more than 350 years old, is a baroque masterpiece out of la traviata, which regrettably charges 8 euros for a latte, so I hearken to the shabbier shop nearby for a standing 2 euro capucchino. And here loiters the one drawback to this gilded city; the prices. Everthing is expensive, museum entries, coffee and pasta, and much as the masks and murano glass. There was a time in the city's history that saw her cater to the poetic whims of the European aristocracy, beginning their grand tours of Italy, and it often seems the place has yet to escape from that decayed romance, to realistically grip the reality of dreadlocked American and canadian backpackers. Granted I'm somewhere betwixt, but I still don't want to part with a tenner for a coffee the size of my cupped hand. Otherwise this city can be summed thus; it is a place more like an idyllic film set than an actuality but it is in fact, actualized. Tourists, students, gondoliers, fishermen and roving tat sellers rub against the frayed skirts of methuselan women leaning heavily on their canes, a patiose of every language echoes off the narrow alleys, and ocassionally,opera music seeps from brick sodden, baritone corners, and I forget my position in time, shuffling within an anachronism. And no cars! Just shouts and heavy footfalls, the rare propellored boat like a tempest along the quiescent canal. And yes, I stuffed my face full of dripping pizza yet again, for the 6th straight day.24th- the day spent wandering more canals, getting lost and found again, spying a cathedral in the mist lolling dangerously to the side. The exact same women we saw in Rome, have followed us here with their tin cups, crying alms in their scarves. Are you forced into penury here if you are female, abstractly Saracen and a wearer of head scarves? We eat a stunning meal of noble Venetian risotto doused liberally in seafood, and wash it into our canals with cool white wine. The room is cold when we return, and we draw a great curtain around the bed as whispers from the alley populate the air with ghosts.

I have a difficult time getting a fix on reaching the via appia; there is a different suggestion for every landmark, be it the catacombs, metulla's tomb or aquaducts. I realize after 3 hours worth of walking on the jutting tufa that there is a good reason. That being, thanks to this highly informative metal plaque and map, that the road in question stretches along 3500 hectares of land, Asshole. We managed around 1000 before giving our feet up as lost. But made it to the old bit in the brochure before succumbing.... And then we walked all the way back, being unable to blag our way onto a bussload of Dutch invalids, and nowhere even near a metro. We join a later than usual train to Venice at 11pm, discovering our seats taken by an enormous Italian man reclining porpoise-likeover the entire row, spilling injudiciuosly out of his narrow shirt. A complaint to the conductor turns into a request for upgrade, and we land softly into our first class sleeper compartment, where christiane attempts actual use of the bedding, while I contemplate how best to straddle her face using the two parrallel bunks as a bolster. She thankfully recognizes the the unavoidable force Eros exerts over jungle gymnasium escapades, and the cost of the compartment is duly offset many orders of magnitude. We arrive in Venice just before 6, well rested for once, and worm our way through the labyrinth to the domus of an archeologist, a dear man named Diego who has agreed to host our brief invasion.

The sun broke from over the Vatican walls as though guided by a masons plumb line, a razor of light opaque enough to steer the focus of my lense. Natural artifice, smog, or the sheer gravity of gods greatest edifice, never have I seen sun so visual. When it falls without impediment, it drowns the roman spaces in a luminous sheet that works against the dimension of the city, flattening it's hills and domes. I don't need to throw money into the trevi fountain to return here, because the Sistine chapel is inexplicably closed today, and as tomorrow is sunday and our final one here in Rome, I will have missed the biggest tourist attraction in Italy. Oops. The pantheon is next, a thorougly stunning cylindrical occulus in the best state of repair in all Rome, because of course, it was converted to a church thereby preserving the stone in the wake of the churches many building projects throughout history. The niches are occupied with holy figures of course, and the sense of them not belonging is palpable. I see in my minds eye, towering phidian apollos and Dioscuri. And greeted by diminutive, languid apostles, even painting pushed into the naves, beneath the smaller arches for lesser godlings, now empty above catholic requilaries like the gouged sockets of an unrepentant Anglican. Is that a mcdonalds I see before me? I drown my desire to behold striding pagan deities in a big mac. A long meandering walk in the neighborhood later in the evening increases my girth some by further adventures in pizza. My stomach is beginning to look distinctly..fertilized. I hope I remain spry enough to dodge the copious coils of dog shit, lying like landmines beneath the umber leaves.

no amount of coffee enough to throttle the moist, ragged breath of sleep that shadows me. How long that shadow stretches, measured in men or minutes. The smell of mouldering bricks rouses me but into a dream state, and I keep closing my eyes to reconstruct the grandeur of the old republic out of the bones the church left behind. The ruined expanse is vast, scattered, the maw of an ancient hound, marble fragments like broken teeth scattered in corners. I wonder how much the Vatican saved in transportation costs with a ready cut stone quarry in the neighborhood. Am I the only one who has to fight to not leap around on the remaining structures? Or wondering how mich trouble I'd really fall into by hopping fences into the catacombs and temples that deny me. Too many fences, a concentration camp for malformed decrepit monuments. We spend almost as much time in termini station buying our tickets to Venice as we do on the palantine.

I stupidly insist on an uninspired walking tour, the cost of which I almost instantly refund to christiane, after she is hauled up beside a squat roman mammoth squeezed out of a gladiator costume like a sweating hairy toothpaste. The building itself is so alarming in it's elliptical glory, it look an usher in a laminated name tag to shoo us out at sunset. Dueling flocks of starlings undulate and sculpt in the stricken sky above the forum. Pizza becomes a thrice nightly excursion, and we run down a tavola said to have the best, south of ruin in the trastevere. It does, and my jetisoning waistline attempts to offset the weight of my camera and succeeds with this double offering to the pagan gods of prosciutto and cheese. Our waiter looks like a hippy Clive Owen.An opened window stirs the steaming viscera of newly slaughtered fuck.

And presented with a panorama of the city, even the smog seems to caress it's precipices, like a ragged lover spat from the hosannas of tail pipes and cigarette ash. My illustrious descent is crowned by a great, seething cheese sandwitch from a nearby tavola, it's shape a blunt slice of statuary, perhaps something chiselled off from zeus in a fever of pious zeal. Which turns my equally pious nap into a sustained slumber that eats the crusts of remaining day, and breaks briefly into a growling romp before succumbing.19th- even the hotel coffee is good in Rome, though it washes down my inadvertant sandwich of salami on glazed croissant. If tastebuds were mobile things, my mouth would be a desert right about now. But it's free with the room so I obviously eat it, goaded by the thrown, chewy gurgles erupting from couples old as Vesuvius occupying every other table in the small space. A long and brilliant walk passing the Trevi fountain and quirinal, stops for ice cream, coffee and clementines, deposited amidst that great pile of debris; the colloseum.

I spend the vastness of this first day in the city of earlier dreams exploring the Vatican basilica. The roads have no lines painted on their slick surface and the vehicles plunge like serpents around each other and their pedestrian prey. I hope that I'm of the cricket variety despite being mostly one-legged, but I don't plan to stay still long enough to find out. The first thrill of the obelisk is ground somewhat by scaffolding and great swathes of humanity baking in the sultry air. But the interior is something built for a dragons conceit, cavernous arches and scooped halls shot through with mosaic and gold, sunlight lancing in from immense windows carved high into the walls. But still the feeling that all of it is built as a vessel, something to fill. I wish I could enjoy this alone and empty. I retreat up to the cupola, threading my way slowly from the bowels up into the bright.

Somewhere in the morning, my discomfort settles, and I dream of temples. There is an entrance flavored for every belief, but I am stopped by the cool air from an ornate Buddhist arch with a small smiling stone statue in an adjacent nave. The arch multiplies infinitely, each entry stacked slightly behind it's brother and through the appearance of eternity I see a welcoming space, far down the tunnel. Though I do not feel prevented from entering, it is not time to do this, only to arise and be at peace, tumbling slowly beyond the door and into

The Rome airport has an idiom of a figure on its knees, for either prayer or blowjobs I imagine. Perhaps both, depending on your degree of faith. The air is cloying, like being pressed against anothers breath, or at least it is inside this train. The woman facing me inhales from a grubby orange packet of cookies, fidgets with a phone trapped in frayed strips of duct tape, the curled flypaper edges capture the few crumbs escaping the surface of her rusping mustachios. Her invariable mole peers, like a bent glaswegian counselor looking to skim the best of the meal for himself. Such moles are invariably male. On the metro a man, sitting just by the door, has somehow managed to will a perfect shining ellipse of baldness just at the crown of his head, like a tonsure. flowing silver hair cascading from the perimeter of this dome give him, when viewed from the rear, the unenviable aspect of a single fried egg.

I return to the apartment at 3, for Ismas gothic paella, a seafood and rice dish the color of newly packaged formula one tires, as the ink of the squid is actually used to saute the dish. Our flight is late and we miss the last tube home, but the view of oxford circus's christmas lights from the top of the nightbus makes it all worthwhile.

we are walking up, up into a labyrinth-like park, each terrace more commanding than the next, each vista more sweeping. I am awed by the tension between the sagrada familias undulating, towering lineless bulk, and the gherkins muscularly ellipsoid proboscis.

I realize as the 4 pound camera leans off my left shoulder, slowly bending my spine, that I have not been able to put it away, that Barcelona has the most beautiful light that encourages me to inanely frame bits of trash, a freeway overpass, even pigeons for gods sake...I feel like that little girl in petticoats I once was before deciding to be a super serious photographer man. A feeling worth remembering.

did I mention the filming of a car ad, complete with greenscreen? (comments: 0 )

another sampling of the all round best coffied city I've visited, and I am rocket fuelled and ready for colored rain on windowpane gaudi, beginning with his apartment building, and ending in a reinvented Spanish village made just for the olympics and me. Some dubious sandwich for lunch in the scattered sun, made vastly more interesting by a troupe of squabbling, 5 year olds, who could not manage 2 minutes without assaulting one another. The village offered a multitude of organic arts and crafts, cunningly disguised as tourist tat... Or maybe a bunch of tat shops that upped their game a skoshe.

las ramblas, watch yo shit! For here we are in pickpocket central, and we survive and pursue an armorer who I've been pestering for some time, Manuel albarran. We pass bibis store to marvel at a giant poster of christiane.

Bibi and isma's apartment is literally stuffed with action figures, sci fi and art books, and we are well at home and in awe, especially of the life size face hugger from Alien, that will find itself in a rude shoot of my choosing sometime soon. In fact many of these creatures need to be grafted to naked ladies immediately. (I used elements of Isma's cylon action statue to realize this image)

up at 8:30am, and ready to take guille by photogenic storm, I rage sleepily to the tune of a rumbling belly. Getting back early didn't help, vast and utter are my fellow tourists. We walk onward through a beautiful hospital complex by gaudi, assaulted by the sheer precipitous enormity of sagrada familia, just visible through a giant arch. The scope of this edifice is impossible to grasp, 120 years worth of construction and a further 15 years at least before completion. The interior, albeit imposing, did feel a bit like paying 11 euros to see a building site. Half finished should mean half price, right? Christiane insisting on food beneath the sagrada, the closest being a kfc... Her unholy influence on me prevails. It's a wonderfully dust bitten windy city to wander through...

The park looks as though a god consulting walt Disney and Phidias artfully directed a lava flow through a field of aquamarine tiles. Fucking tourists, don't they realize my photos of this waxy glory would improve geometrically were they elsewhere? My images have purpose! Fuck off out of my frame to sagrada familia! I hope to wake early enough tomorrow to return to this elemental state without all of it's tat seeking ants, ok I really wanted to buy a gaudi mug, but I'm still trying to make art here, people. Only thing left to do before we sleep for 12 hours in proper Spanish form, is to order a ham sandwich with a hole cut out the top and a fried egg dropped into it...

we wake at a balmy 4:30am in order to make our flight to Barcelona only to find the train cancelled when we reach the station. Luckily, we easily pick out a few more victims and share a taxi over, together with a garrelous last minute additive to our entourage; a drunken young man paying a surprise visit to his brother, at 8am...fingers crossed. Arriving in Barcelona without further issue we manage the route to the decidedly lovely apartment of christianes friend bibian, ogle her vast army of collectibles, and, valuables stowed in our most unreachable areas, stomp off to explore. The parque guiell is only 15 minutes walk, and I feel a sensation akin to first seeing the eifell tower as we reach the summit of a side street and turn into the vista of gaudis dripping, undulating and impossible architecture.

we do our best to find portobello rd by first arriving at notting hill, but inexpertly wind away from our destination, ending up at Kensington park. Flocks of unhinged many specied birds gather to molest the unwary bread wielder, and then, in the center of the rather spacious common, it suddenly turns torrential. We are soaked by the time we make it back to the street, just in time for the downpour to inexplicably cease. The taunts of the geese weigh heavily on me, and I decide there must be a shoot of christiane chasing them with a rather large butterfly net.

cake for breakfast, rose at the crack of 1pm, and little to do before the bus to lubeck. I think of this trip as a very successful tourist experience, but for the replacement of monuments with naked, willing nymphs. Explore the people not the places... Wish they also came with a guided audio tour.I feel a sense of complete and boundless peace suffuse me as I step into Victoria station and hear the train announcements in a language that isn't German. Jostle me with your shoulders and vocal cords, oh hurrying speakers of my mother tongue!

we awoke to the inevitability of sam a-cooking, make that much more intense by the fact that the three of us are attempting to start a fire American Indian style, by excitably grinding our legs together. Lovely lunch with mr Von bock, a great friend from central American ages past, chatting on largely anecdotally about the past 3 years we'd not seen one another. I have been a somewhat healthy eater during this trip - it seemed like germany with it's less than stellar sausage, soda shops and ultrapasturized milk that needed not the crutch of refrigeration - was a perfect opportunity. I fall off the wagon spectacularly into the waiting arms of a bk double bacon burger that sits in my stomach like a renunciant Buddha for the remaider of Berlin. We get a budget 8 euro train ticket back to hamburg that extends the usual 90 minute trip to just over 5 hours of scenic darkness, arriving rainsodden and just minutes late for the last tube. 15 euros flayed from our irregilious posteriors and we arrive at the aparment for a late night, heavily be-pillowed game of who's on my face?

The wander concludes with further gaming, and I triumph with my undying cache of spirit amazons. We all decide in the kitchen, that despite the unyielding cold, we must brave the frigid cobbles this Halloween, don the raiment and Sally into the aged evening. We got out of the house eventually, and I was well liquored and thereby warmer than I thought. The party, feenfest, is the best stocked dungeon ever, replete with stables and stretching racks, and unfortunately shoulder high candled wall sconces, which improved on christianes heavily hairsprayed coif by setting it ablaze. She manages to extinguish herself, as the rest of us are so pissed we can only point and slur firrrrey! We all dance spastically and thank the gods for Berlin weekend all night trains, hasten back to bed where the 3 of us do our best to frustrate each others sporadic advances. Sam is after all, asleep on the undulating air mattress on the floor, failing to stop the leak with a bit of orange chewing gum, which ironically does taste a lot like I imagine rubber cement and a bike patch might, if properly packaged and dipped in citrus furniture polish.

I return to pergamon museum, but this time I receive an audio guide to the treasures, vastly enriching the experience and the concurrent foot aches associated with standing for so long in a spot. Brilliant to realize exactly what the goddess wields on the frieze, the name of the vanquished giant and the half mortal Hercules, the battles fulcrum. We wander through museum island, and have soup after a prolonged ogle at a soviet whiskey flask. Sam continued his foray into food, a welcome crepery waking to the birthday of robekkahs, and doling out a mighty portion of birthday dry humps, circus style. Christiane and robekkah have deputized my stomach their personal portable central hand heating device to my dismay, which speeds mu reflexes some...chris did point out a goodyear blimp floating outside the window and duly thrust her hands under my shirt when i turned to see. Turns out berlins a bit thin on blimps, or theyre the disappearing kind, because i saw nothing beyond the dust dry foliage and buildings fecund with grafitti.

He once drove across southern Germany, towards Berlin. The frost Advanced alongside, and the leaves, ageing and turning at different intervals, lent a gauntly 3 dimensional vista to the scenery. Even the sky took up the plot, as flocks of birds more legion than a locust swarm, in relief against the gathering slate sky. They flew overhead in v'S, meeting line, so straight that he appeared to look at 2 dense birds, fanning out like a deck of cards as they slowly and inexplicably turned towards the silouhuetteing sun. Choose. Pick a card, and tear it in pieces, and in the scattering I'll predict it's origin. I will divine us from the oracular birds, and found a city underneath your body.

took a carpool to Berlin after waffles to visit sam, played board games all damn night drunk on scotch that I poured into my fruit bowl, and huddled courageously, the three of us under a single size duvet, while sam wrestled with his own recalcitrant inflatable. What is it about German air filled things? I'd hate to own a pool in this place, because it'd be frozen right now anyway, so I'd have crap uninflated rafts and a giraffe on my pool shaped ice cube, and I'd wear a speedo that, due exclusively to cold, would appear rather uninflated as well.

Germany seems to hearken towards a blitzkreig form of advertising; there are maybe 3 ads repeated almost infinitely on every billboard and bus stop; my current favorite is one featuring Alice Cooper for germany's version of Best Buy, leering sociopathically behind his pointed finger.

We walked through the immense town hall and I obsessed over these amazing, tiny dioramas depicting the progress and eventual destruction of the Berlin wall. Stayed in that night, and gave the inflatability of the bed a real challenge by adding a third party and an awful lot of wriggling. I slithered over the girls and out of the indentation, plugging the pump back in and cheerfully resurrecting our playpen.

we ran all day around hamburg like stung and dutiful tourists, shivering and wiping and moaning amidst the gunmetal grey inevitable sky. It's cold here, trims our eagerness somewhat. We took a glass elevator up 700m above the city, in the spire of a bomb wrecked cathedral. The plaques were all about the carnage of hamburg during ww2, but each ended with an apologetic admission of germanys guilt in starting the conflagration in the first place, the allies blasted us into bits, and you're in the only bit left of our great cathdral, but our bad, we invaded Poland.

After the abysmal sleep, I experienced this new city by way of a 4 hour nap on robekkahs inflatable bed, that rebelliously deflated 2 hours into it. Sleep on the airport floor was an inevitability, I fear. The apartment was adorned with decidely angry taxidermied ferrets and foxes, one dyed the blue of football colors, framed images of hairless cats and grand and immaculate vintage castle grayskull atop it all. It reminds me of limitless childhood hours spent against the odor of newly opened action figures, my collection of motley he-man avaters doing battle and switching allegiance on my bedroom floor. I remember the trapdoor in the castle, and tumble into my ten yearold self.

I stupidly booked our tickets to hamburg too early for the first train to stansted, so we take a bus tonight and plan a delightful soujorn in the airport for five hours until departure. The airport resembles a youth hostel, people curled against the walls of arrivals, spilling over their suitcases, or propped up in chairs like marionettes. We found a fitful spot next to the mens room and set about pretending to sleep. By the time 4am rolled out, we were both delerious, christianes condtion exacerbated by the lack of corrective lenses, her delerium enhanced by the blur of lights from the duty free. We arrived the following morning and bore witness to the deep inexorable nature of german precision; each flight to lubeck has it's own bus to hamburgs main terminus, and there were too many of us for the one. Another was ordered, and in the meantime those of us on the bus waited an hour before leaving, because all passengers were required to arrive in hamburg simultaneously.

Spent the afternoon roaming around a small museum within the British library, containing among other things, the original magna carta. It is emboldening to see a handwritten poem by Sylvia Plath and others, literary immortals that in fact, crossed out whole lines of their poems, adding and eradicating words throughout. We were all once only human, deified by the printing press and, ultimately, the spell check.

what if it were possible, particularly during adventurous and exploratory periods, to mindfully switch from passive to active enjoyment? Thrill? Spending a brief conrner of our day with grant and Kristan, I'd never thought to hear such descriptive eloquence illustrating the position of the largest nuclear deterrant both in relation to grant's country residence and past experience, a quick quantum equation explaining space and time coordinates of scotch submarines with grant as it's constant.

Word to the wise: from a photograpically demented standpoint, skip the big , impressive museums and beeline for the oddest, the smallest and most out of the way antiquity joints available. Kristan Morrison took us along a Glasgow byway to the transport museum, a daft warehouse full of disused tramcars and plastic horses, as well as the immaculate facades of a high street from the 1920s, complete with cars and window displays. I could make long and handy stories using these as a backdrop.

spent the afternoon roaming around a small museum within the British library, containing among other things, the original magna carta. It is emboldening to see a handwritten poem by Sylvia Plath and others, literary immortals that in fact, crossed out whole lines of their poems, adding and eradicating words throughout. We were all once only human, deified by the printing press and, ultimately, the spell check.

I woke in the child's room that my lover had grown in, hidden in a ring of books and faeries. And crept down to breakfast, the sky through the window hanging low and grey, like a funeral veil. I remember what it was about her, beyond her obvious beauty, that drew and turned me. Grace of movement. She moves like that only when no ones looking, or when it's dark.

19th-This trip is shaking pieces off me, moving the inert dust. Not a massive upheaval, but something subtle, like a process or meditation. And I want to help it, this chemistry, I want to limber up the bones and brain beneath the dust, and soften the soil for the plough. Did someone put a canoe in my trousers?

Arrive at the glorious villa of David bereguard's ancestors, had a wonderful dinner with the family of jean-marc, slept 12 hrs then bicycled through village to l'auberge de cygnet for lunch, slept on a matress in the sun then went for a walk in blackness after sex. Followed by cards and Camembert in our massive living room. I heart villas.

Don't go to provins with luggage, all hills and cobblestones, no lockers in the station. But it does boast a thousand year history, protected by a great network of battlements you can actually explore unsupervised. As in you can jump on them! And climb and hurdle, not that I did, I was respectful.

We manage to generate a tail for this photographic comet, as upwards of 15 people begin to shamelessly follow us, shooting with whatever gizmos they have on hand. even attracted my first ever papparazzi, who clearly is the first to intuit the fame I have yet to achieve...

Paris is the city of ancient and obese doors that take two to open, and yes the Tower does in fact take your breath away the moment you see it. I see it first materialize out of mist above the heads of the barely clad models I'm shooting in the Place de Concorde, so its really a 2-fer.

Sooo, apparently it is not only ok for children rounding the age of 6 to urinate in public, making utter spectacles of themselves, but tis also acceptable, nay expected, that their parent take an active role in holding, shaking and dabbing. Never have I felt so titanic a wave of culture shock, or put away my camera so hastily.

There is one peculiar thing missing from the streets of Paris; coffee shops. I'm in a fucking starbucks in Paris because after a one hour walk, I'd been unable to locate the quotidian mélange of espresso and pastries. At least English is spoken, albeit tentatively, as last night I cunning attempted my pizzeria order in French and ended down 35 euros and up 2 extra pies. Apparently coke is a type of pizza here, involving chicken and a manner of pepper...I ordered 2.

OCT9th-My first brilliant experience after removing myself from the eurostar is the dulcet singing voice of the french train announcements, it just made me feel so at home in their station. Which explains why it takes me an hour to actually exit the place, what with a distinctly foreign aspect to the signage and trouble finding a luggage locker. The coiffed spaniel riding up the escalator with her master greets me as I take my leave, and I realize I don't believe ever having seen a dog on an escalator before, but it does have a ring to it. The corner bakeries are populated with baskets of conspicuously French bread. Obscure French words for search, thing, without, rise like ramparts from the fog of war, but do little to assist in the purchase of cheese. Better to have remembered the French for smoked, or cheddar; ended up with neither, just a wedge of something soft and smelling of moist earth, that spread proudly over heel of a baguette.

My favorite view of the Mona Lisa was of all the people queuing to take her picture, often with a flash despite her being glassed off; the reason being at least 90% of these art lovers actually walked away after their photo...without looking at the fucking painting! At least their camera phone got to see the world's most famous portrait. And yes, I took this with my camera phone

A picturesque view from the monument of the sheer stupendous glory and sass that be edinburgh. I limped up 200 fucking stairs, so appreciate. They have a Cafe Nero just off the right in an alley, for those making a similar pilgrimage, and this one provides a magic card, that when stamped 9 times, manifests a free mug of coffee.

We stayed at Skin, the fab pink lustered model who graces the wanks of the rich and famous, due largely to her spread in Bizarre. I am still reverse jet lagged, so this view is basically what I saw every morning at 7am. The city is a darling, so finite, so utterly crossable! You can climb something high and see right where it gets eaten up by pasture on most every side. Not nibbled mind you, thoroughly consumed! I think perhaps 3 years of LA's sprawl invites a sheer and gratifying pleasure beholding a modest city comfortable with its own proportions.

london st pancras station, waiting for my silver streak to Edinburgh. This trip incited a dear feeling in my cockles for the english sheep. They looked like tiny snowflakes, scattered by the shadow of the oncoming train.

Vex refuses to pose for me, so we decided to turn out digits into dinosaurs, and let them battle it out before the view out my window, in verdant Clapham Common. Mine was a carnevorous brontosoreass, thats a joke to remind myself that I'm vulgar and american despite my current living circumstances, ancestry, and accidental charm.

This is an impromptu from my last shoot in LA, as I am now wuthering the hedgerows of jolly England for the next few months. Notice the strident moustachios, capably, earnestly supported by the dapper braces and half wainscotting of duds Heathen, my faultless five and diamond obsession.

Sometimes we need nude black and white images of ladies in helmets to remind us of what love looks like. The fact that its only been a day since she left for Edinburgh, and I'm already pining away alone in our little room above Clapham Commom, must mean that either I'm a pruned sap, or possessed of an awful short term memory.

Skin is the first experiment in pretty pretty versus portrait...theres a book here somewhere, but I don't have the energy and latex feels like wearing wet cabbages on you, I know because I had to wear a shirt once for a fashion show.

If dylan monroe was any better looking, I'd send a search party out looking for his humanity. He hurts your eyes less if you squint, but that gives you wrinkles, and then a day will come when you blame dylan for your unattractive crows feet, and he doesn't need that pressure.

all kinds of people populate the hollywood cemetary not the least of which is this mustachio'ed minx; apparently she grows and cultivates rhinestones in nebulous Topanga caverns with which to adorn her upper lips and like areas..

I recently had the chance to knock heads with the elusive Norton P, fresh from his travels about and around the Orient; the sheer will within his outstreched palm was enough to draw me away from the confines of this reality.

jeff parise the ever presence, invokes the spirit of a long dead sorceror with an enormous penis in order to further the cause of Czarist russia. he then proceeded to cut his own hair and beard for a follow up headshot, so not only can he act, he's a shoe in for the supercuts franchise

Lost in the land where bad paintings go to die, the Marquess Oasis de Cameltoe, heir to the realm of Good Taste, forges ahead through the twisted brambles and gilt, searching for a way home. Armed with the artifact Clouded Judgement, a head that glowed when danger hovers, her royal breast bare and perky, she marvels at the sheer absence of negative space.

The dulcet tread of the Marquess did not go unnoticed; the dark Lady of the amputee animals sensed the fresh and tender spirit ambling amidst the disembodied bits and moths and creatury things, and summoned her minions thus beginning the chase. Woe betide the innocently accessorized wandering the lairs of her legion.

She came to a turn amidst a boar infested chimney, and the Clouded Judgment shone excelsior, boding trouble for the questing Marquess. A quicksliver shadow flashed to her left, drowned by the sudden crash of something big behind...

Bursting from the inverted underbrush, or overbrush as it were, a fell apparition, the lion guardian of the Nether Regions, the arch fiend Derrick, or Duds for short. The terrified Marquess plunged forward into the mangy morass, the sulfur breath of the beast hot against her hips.

The moment all seemed lost, she is rescued by the demon Denver Barbados. Though initially wary of the motives of her would be savior, known to be the illegitimate adopted daughter of the Grandest Demon Ouchless Tumor, the Marquess was nonetheless won over by her magpie love of brassy accessories and horns. She felt safe crushed against the armored bosom of Barbados.

The Demon Barbados demanded payment for the timely rescue of the royal personage, and only one would suffice. All royals carry within them a hand crafted wooden soul, made by the finest Balinese sculptors, as a better than average replacement for an actual one....forged in the nethers of Queen Babs Downey Jr, the soul was the Marquess' only link between the realm of the Living, and compelling puppet theatre.

Her pantomime soul finally lost to the Demon Barbados, the Marquess Oasis de Cameltoe suffers the ultimate penalty for her faith in wire and bits; pushed from the precipice into a void of carbon darkness where lurks the most fearful, lurky mystery accessory of them all. 1970's David Bowie's Codpiece.
To be continued...........

shooting Gila and Choya at the same time was tantamount to walking into the Louvre, pulling the Mona Lisa off the wall, and smashing it over my head, then wandering around trapped in the picture frame bleeding all over the marble parquet, leering beatifically. It was hot

One from a promo shoot for Salvage clothing, featuring Aaron, the drummer from Prong. The remainder of the images are top secret for now, as they depict unreleased scenes of carnal t-shirt chaopathy that cannot see the light of day. I.E. no one's seen the designs, and yes, thats a made up word. For those of you who care deeply, I also shot the cover art for Prongs most recent CD, which I don't have yet....hopefully its really disgustingly goodlooking, like the drummer Aaron.

the 2 faces of my great sage and friend Erin, and her Janus faced anti-hipster, Weston, who is so cool, he had to face away from the camera lest I became over infatuated with his oh so bloggable face. I think if they have a boy baby together, he'd look just like the infant version of keifer sutherland. My camera and I will bear witness should this singularity occur.

kate, keep your boobs to yourself, you showoff. Albeit a wonderful model and designer, Kate cannot help but flaunt her chesty bits, insisting to all and sundry that they admit to her boob supremacy and kowtow before them. If I had a pound sterling for every time she mentioned them things, what with the currency exchange and US interest rates at an all time low, I have, like, 4 dollars.

I was fortunate to shoot in an incredible metal working studio by Joe, the resident maestro, and Rachel, the wardrobe stylist and a reincarnated WWII paratrooper. If you plan on a jaunt to burning man this year, you will get to see some of joe's masterful pieces in action. Hair and make up by christian and bea, hotness courtesy of kumi, nell and kate.

Ulorin was gracious to drive to london from far away in order to shoot with me. I think mostly because she intended to steal Robert's hair pieces and elope with them to Cocomo, but I've been wrong before.

this is the first image from a series featuring Kumi and Ulorin in london. I'd been shooting for 8 hours at the White Womb, but somehow witnessing the scantily clad kumis and vexes woke me right up. Tony's light and stormy cocktails didn't hurt much either.....fancy hair and makeup sizzle courtesy of the greats Robert Masciave and Bea Sweet, and Olga made sure the silly factor was almost on par with the sexy factor; almost!

this my friend Medina, she is nice, a very premium dancer and can actually wink using either eye, but I am exceptionally beloved of the right. She also makes clothings that are first rate style, and is incredibly tall for a non-lesbian

this was a challenging shoot largely because we were trying for 4 different look plus a bluescreen scene all shot in under 3 hours. My thanks to John Moore PR, Mr Littlejohn for playing dress up, and Jimmy for his courage under fire.